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A pontificate of paradox

John Paul II leaves legacy of achievement in political freedoms and controversy on social issues

When Pope John Paul II died April 2 at age 84,
world leaders lionized him, describing the pontiff on the day of his
death as extraordinary, brilliant, magnificent, a “great and saintly
man,” and a “gift from heaven.”

He was all these things, but John Paul—who led
the Roman Catholic Church for 26 years, the third-longest pontificate
in history—was perhaps more than anything a paradox. He is credited
with progressive, even revolutionary, human-rights achievements: His
greatest legacy is his role in toppling the totalitarian government of
his native Poland in 1989, which led to the fall of European communism.
He stared down dictators, lobbied on behalf of the poor and powerless,
and openly reprimanded the U.S. government for the Persian Gulf and
Iraq wars. He regularly criticized the “culture of death,” American
consumerism and European secularism.

Yet on other moral and
religious issues, he was a strict conservative who stuck to his belief
in traditional roles for women and his opposition to abortion, birth
control, divorce, euthanasia and stem-cell research. As pope, he was
described as an autocrat who stifled dissent within the church. His
critics say he left the church in disarray—with a still-unfolding
global clergy sex-abuse scandal and declining membership, particularly
in Europe.